Pierre Plantard, best known for being the principal perpetrator of
the Priory of Sion hoax

The Priory of Sion Hoax
By Robert Richardson
(Source: http://www.alpheus.org/html/articles/esoteric_history/richardson1.html)

I

N RECENT YEARS, A GREAT DEAL OF INFORMATION has been
published in books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Jonathon Cape 1982)
alleging that the Holy Grail actually refers to a bloodline descended
from Jesus. By this account Jesus and Mary Magdalene produced
offspring, and their descendants gave rise to the Merovingian
dynasty, which ruled France from 476 to 750 C.E. Well intentioned
readers and even authors have been deceived by this story and have
mistaken it for the revelation of a suppressed history. Unfortunately
the only thing that has been suppressed is the truth.

The Grail is not a bloodline. This false story originated in reams
of fraudulent documents created by an extreme right-wing French
sect. The group responsible for these fictions, calling itself the Priory
of Sion (Prieuré de Sion) and claiming an ancient esoteric lineage, has
kept its own authentic history carefully hidden. How it constructed
its fraud has not been revealed. It is long past time for the light of
truth to reveal the ‘Priory of Sion’ and the fictional bloodline it has
promoted for what they are really are, a fraud. The background of
this group reveals its actual motives and sources of information.
The trail to the Priory of Sion fraud begins in mid-nineteenthcentury France. A resurgent interest in the occult led to the creation
of many esoteric groups. Members of these groups often belonged
to several organisations. Their leaders often broke away to form
competing factions. At the same time, constant turmoil in the French
government drew France into two increasingly hostile camps jousting
for political supremacy. The royalists, composed of the Catholic
Church, the far right, and the supporters of the old system of royalty,

vied for power with the republicans, composed of Freemasons and
other supporters of democratically elected governments. Their
struggle affected the lives and views of every Frenchman. From 1877
to the eve of the Second World War, Freemasons dominated French
government. Their domination earned them bitter enemies.
In the 1880’s, at the height of this political conflict, Joseph
Alexandre St. Yves d’Alveydre, ‘the supreme Hermeticist of his
epoch’,(1) proposed a new idea for injecting moral values into
governing society. He called it ‘synarchy’ and claimed it was the
method used by the Knights Templar to change medieval society. An
elect band of initiates would influence groups representing different
aspects of society. Those groups would influence their spheres and
ultimately the entire social order.
By the turn of the century, the royalist faction came to fear
synarchy, whose influence had spread beyond esoteric groups. By
the 1920s, Masonic groups with distinctly synarchist policies were a
reality in France. In the 1930s, even a leftist group, called the X-Cruise
Club, advocated a technocracy with synarchist ideas.(2)
In this era, the French far right formed its own seemingly esoteric
groups. But they were actually front organisations, pretending to
have Masonic and esoteric affiliations in order to draw support away
from the Masons. As anti-semitism spread across Europe in the
1930s, the French far right denounced Masons and Jews in the same
breath. When fourteen initiatic orders created a federation called
FUDOSI to promote peace and positive ideals, the far right increased
its formation of pseudo-Masonic groups.
During the war, Nazi occupation policy was to arrest leaders of
esoteric organizations, put them in concentration camps, and seize
their groups’ records and membership rolls, which were placed in a
central depository. In France this depository was called the Centre
d’Action Maconnique, and the French occupation government at Vichy
actively aided the Gestapo in its persecution of Masonic and esoteric
orders. So great was the far right’s fear of Masonic influence that an
unknown source even issued a document called the Chauvin Report,
alleging Masonic involvement in Vichy. (3) While these events were
taking place, the individuals who later formed the Priory of Sion were
being gathered into two groups. One group, known to have been in
4

existence as early as 1934, was called Alpha Galates. Toward the
end of the 1930s Alpha Galates utilised a young man named Pierre
Plantard, born on 18th March, 1920, as its titular head.
In 1937, at the age of only seventeen, Plantard attempted to
found an anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic group to engage ‘purifying
and renewing France’ and sought official permission to publish
a periodical called The Renewal of France. (4) This theme would
constantly appear in association with Alpha Galates and later with
the Priory of Sion.
By 1939, Plantard headed a Catholic youth group holding retreats
in Brittany for teenagers and in 1939 was also noted as addressing
a gathering of Catholic youth. Either Plantard was exceptionally
precocious or he was carefully coached by older people, including a
probable sponsor inside the Church who arranged his engagements.
Most likely, he made these connections through ties to the parent
organisation of Alpha Galates and through his own youthful activities
at the Parisian parish of St. Louis d’Antin, where he eventually
became its sexton.
Under the collaborationist Vichy regime, the group behind
Plantard and Alpha Galates sought influence with the government.
On 16th December, 1940, Plantard wrote to Marshal Petain, head of
the Vichy regime, denouncing a vast Jewish-Masonic plot. But he
failed to receive any attention beyond routine entries in police files.
In 1941, Plantard applied to found an organisation called “French
National Renewal” (Renovation Nationale Française) but was denied
official permission in September of that year. Finally in 1942,
Plantard and his superiors again sought public visibility, now openly
using the name Alpha Galates and promoting a publication called
Vaincre (‘Conquer’).
Vaincre, which commenced publication in September 1942, was
filled with anti-Semitic, fawningly pro-Vichy articles and sprinkled
with shallow, superficial esoterica on Celtic traditions and chivalry.
Nonetheless Alpha Galates tried to present this journal as the
clearinghouse of a relatively sizable and cohesive body of young
people. After six issues it ceased publication. But it earned Plantard
some recognition. He was periodically observed by the police. As late
as February 1945, the police were still investigating Alpha Galates
5

and its revolving-door membership of fifty or so, and concluded it had
no serious purpose. But at least one serious seeker, Robert Amadou,
who joined Alpha Galates believing it was a genuine esoteric group,
suggests that its focus was political. Later a Freemason and Martinist,
after 40 years Amadou refused to discuss Alpha Galates, only saying,
“For my part, I have never been involved in political activity, before
or since.”
In 1947, while a revived FUDOSI met in Paris, Pierre Plantard
filed the legal papers necessary to create another organisation,
called the ‘Latin Academy’. Its titular head was his own mother. Its
ostensible purpose was ‘historical research’. Its real purpose was
to carry on the right-wing program of its predecessor. By the mid1950s Plantard began promoting himself in Catholic circles as the
Merovingian pretender to the throne of France. One place where he
engaged in these activities was the Paris church and seminary of St.
Sulpice.(7)
In 1956, Plantard and others created a new group named the
‘Priory of Sion’. It had statutes remarkably similar to those of Alpha
Galates and published a magazine called Circuit. Disinformation
which would eventually become widespread about the Rennesle-Chateau affair also began to appear, starting in the magazine La
Depeche de Midi, in early 1956.(8)
With the French government in turmoil in 1958, Plantard and his
group again sought political influence, alleging that they controlled
the pro-de Gaulle Committees of Public Safety and utilising Plantardwritten articles in the newspaper Le Monde to imply a secret
association between de Gaulle and Plantard.(9) Any connection
between de Gaulle and the self-styled ‘eminences grises’ from whom
the great of this world seek counsel(10) is unknown to de Gaulles
associates and biographers. But by 1959 new issues of Circuit were
trumpeting this link.
Circuit shifted to a steady diet of superficial Masonic and esoteric
subjects, flirting with mythology, astrology and chivalry; restructuring
French government; the unique (but unspecified) greatness of
Pierre Plantard; and, of course, French National Renewal. They also
pointedly and proudly promoted anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic back
issues of Vaincre. (11)
6

The book Treasures of the World by Robert Charroux proved a
popular success in France in 1962. Charroux’s mixture of mysticism,
historical mysteries, and lost treasures, and public interest in his
recounting of the mystery of Gisors, allowed the ‘Priory’ to launch itself
into public view. Claiming to be an inside source, the ‘Priory’alleged
that the lost underground chapel of St. Anne in Gisors, Normandy,
contained either secret ‘Priory’ records” or the lost treasure of the
Knights Templars. None of these fictions materialised. But they gave
the ‘Priory’ the visibility to successfully promote itself and its false
history of France, descendants of Jesus and esoteric orders in books
and articles.
The real Priory of Sion was an authentic Catholic monastic order.
A priory is a religious house or order. Sion or Zion is the ancient
name for Jerusalem, where the order was headquartered at the
monastery of Our Lady of Mt. Zion. It transferred its headquarters to
St. Leonard d’Acre in Palestine and later to Sicily. In 1617 it ceased to
exist and was absorbed into the Jesuit order. It was never a seething
cabal of esoteric and political interests, never had any influence over
the Templars or any esoteric orders, and does not exist today as a
legitimate order, Catholic or otherwise. It has been appropriated like
many authentic histories, esoteric traditions and orders to create a
false history. In deference to the truth, in the remainder of this article
I will refer to the false ‘Priory’ in quotes.
Two examples will quickly illustrate how the false ‘Priory’ has
created its fictions. It has attempted to appropriate Templar history
and portray the Templars as subservient to it and to its fictional
bloodline(14) through totally fabricated documents various authors
call ‘the Priory documents’ and by such claims as one that the
familial home of a Templar Grand Master was at Blanchefort, near
Rennes-le-Chateau. Yet Blanchefort was the home of a Cathar noble
by that name, not a Templar Grand Master.(15) Few researchers have
bothered to investigate this or innumerable other outright fictions.
Similarly, Plantard alleges his ‘suppressed’ last name is ‘St. Clair’,
although no shred of proof supports this claim.(16) The Sinclairs
(originally ‘St. Clair’), hereditary heads of Scottish Rite Freemasonry,
were related by marriage to Templar founder Hugh de Payen. In this
way, the ‘Priory’ seeks to imply that it has an ancient and leading
7

role in Masonry. Appropriating honoured names associated with the
esoteric is a tactic used at the time of Alpha Galates by prewar, antiMasonic French rightists.(17)
The ‘Priory’ constructed its fiction of the bloodline of Jesus by
first creating the appearance of an authentic esoteric lineage for
itself. It accomplished this by placing fabricated histories in libraries,
by falsely associating itself with ancient esoteric groups, and by
usurping the heritage of prewar esoteric groups. The group the
‘Priory’ has plagiarised most from is the Order of the Rose-Croix of
the Temple and the Grail, founded by Josephin Peladan in 1891.
This group is intimately connected with the real affair of Rennesle Chateau. Some of its real and alleged links adopted by the ‘Priory’
include: the work of the painter Nicolas Poussin; Emma Calve, a
singer with numerous occult connections; claimed associations
with the Holy Vehm, the Knights Templar, and the survival of a
supposedly lost monarchy; association with prominent cultural
figures, sensationalistic announcements of the discovery of the tomb
of Jesus; the supposition of a higher esoteric order with supreme
knowledge; the Cathars; and other themes appearing in ‘Priory’
inspired stories. Berenger Sauniere, curé of Rennes-le-Chateau from
1885 to 1917, may have been associated with the Order of the RoseCroix of the Temple and the Grail. This association is the source of
the incomplete information which the ‘Priory of Sion’ has inherited
about Rennes-le-Chateau through the ‘Priory’s’ real founder, ‘Count
Israel’ Monti.
The actual ‘Priory’ history begins with that obscure man, Georges
‘Count Israel’ Monti, secretary to Josephin Peladan. Born in Toulouse
in 1880 and Jesuit-educated, Monti considered the priesthood
but entered the world of initiatic orders at age of twenty-two and
became a high-level Scottish Rite Mason.(18) By 1906 he had rapidly
advanced in Peladan’s order. In 1908 he journeyed to Egypt and in
1909 to Munich on Peladan’s behalf.
Following Peladan’s death in 1918, Monti appears as one trying
desperately to be at ground zero of occult activities, but always only
appearing as a supporting player with incomplete knowledge. He
so craved recognition that he even affected the title ‘Count Israel’
Monti. He began to tell melodramatic tales of his involvement in
8

the supposed political activities of esoteric orders, although his
only known political connection was with Leon Daudet, brother of
the leader of the rightist group Action Francaise. And in 1922 Monti
excitedly claimed an affiliation with the controversial magician
Aleister Crowley and his occult group, and said he had been charged
by occult groups in England and Germany to begin a new order.
In 1924, the sorcerer’s apprentice sought to become the master.
Monti acted to fulfill these sweeping directives and formed a new
group. According to occultist Anne Osmont, he moved forward with
a plan “to destroy all which is dear and precious to me, to build
an illusory society.” Together with a man calling himself Gaston
Demengel, Monti, using the name ‘Marcus Vella’, formed a group
calling itself Groupe occidental d’etudes esoteriques, a very small,
supposedly esoteric order. This organisation was highly secretive,
pretending to be an elite body dedicated to bringing the world a
lasting peace and having a male and female branch (the Isis lodge).
The extent of its membership and activities is unknown. Its only
known document claimed as one of its goals the reconciliation of
esoteric orders with the Catholic Church. This goal, as well as the
pretensions of exclusivity, elitism, and an alleged interest in world
peace, is echoed in the ‘Priory of Sion’.
In October 1936, the Bulletin des ateliers superieurs de la Grande
Loge de K France, the organ of the Masonic Grand Lodge, published
a piece denouncing Monti as a trafficker in information, a fraudulent
claimant to nobility, and a supposed Jesuit agent. On the 21st of the
same month, Monti was found dead. His close associate Dr. Camille
Savoire rushed to examine him and claimed that Monti had been
poisoned. Savoire is mentioned in the first issues of Alpha Galates’
magazine Vaincre as one who, along with Plantard, rightist Louis
Le Fur and a Maurice Moncharville, was responsible for creating
Vaincre. In issue No. 4 of Vaincre, Le Fur writes that he was initiated
into Alpha Galates by Georges Monti in 1934. From 1934 until
his death Monti lived at 80 rue du Rocher in Paris. Perhaps too
coincidentally, in 1942-43, Vaincre was printed down the street at 45
rue du Rocher by a Poirer Murat, whose name would surface after
the war in association with Plantard.
Savoire had a long history of forming alternative esoteric groups.
9

While active in Masonry, Savoire disagreed with long-established
Masonic practices, goals, and leadership. Like Monti, Savoire was
made a high-level Scottish Rite Mason, in Geneva in 1910. But
by 1913, Savoire had formed his own group, the ‘National Grand
Lodge of France’ (Grande Loge Nationale Française). In 1935, after
the formation of Alpha Galates, he formed the interestingly named
‘Grand Priory of the Gauls’ (Grand Prieuré des Gaules). He died in
1951. His close association with Monti and his involvement with
alternative orders makes Savoire a likely candidate for assuming
Monti’s vacated leadership of Groupe occidental d’etudes esoteriques.
There are many associations between the pre-war activities of
Plantard and Monti and their associates on the one hand and the
themes identified with the postwar ‘Priory of Sion’ on the other. It
is highly likely that Alpha Galates was a front for Monti’s group and
that Monti’s group continued on, subsequently implementing a plan
which would be carried out under the guise of the ‘Priory of Sion’.
The ‘Priory’s’ first objective is to position itself in the mind of an
unknowing public as the supreme Western esoteric organisation. It
dreams of utilising that constituency in a synarchy-like fashion to
promote its hybrid agenda of right-wing politics and turn-of-thecentury esoteric teachings. It does not represent the real teachings
of any positive esoteric order. It is materialistic, obsessed with
attaining influence, and has fabricated documents without regard
for any ethical considerations. Its program is to manipulate people
through lies in order to promote itself.
The so-called bloodline created by the ‘Priory’ does not exist. There
is no descent from Jesus through the Merovingians or other families;
in fact there is no genuine evidence of any bloodline descended from
Christ. The survival of the Merovingian bloodline as promulgated in
the ‘Priory’ documents is based on the alleged marriage of Giselle de
Razes to the seventh-century Merovingian King Dagobert II. Giselle
de Razes never existed. Plantard and his associates fabricated her.
The fraudulent history of the ‘Priory of Sion’ and its false
bloodline was created by utilising the vast amount of esoteric
documents publicly available in French libraries and by depositing
its own documents among them. For example, Madan’s papers were
deposited in the Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal, and St.-Yves’ papers were
10

deposited in the Sorbonne in 1938 by the son of the well-known
French occultist Papus, along with many of Papus’ own papers.(19)
An investigation by researcher Paul Smith has shown that some
of the documents indicating a supposed bloodline and a ‘Priory’
-inspired poem called Le serpent rouge were printed on the same
press. During the war it is probable that the ‘Priory’ also had access
to the seized records of Masonic and esoteric societies, some quite
old, which were deposited in the occupation-controlled Centre
d’Action Maconnique. This depository was headed by Henri Coston, a
right-wing, anti-Semitic journalist and collaborator, who was quoted
on the first page of Vaincre No. 1.
Similarly, to create credibility with researchers, the ‘Priory’
attached Plantard’s family tree to an authentic genealogy originally
appearing in a special edition of the historical journal Les cahiers de
l’histoire No. 1 (1960), which was deposited in libraries containing
other fabricated ‘Priory’ documents.(20)
The concept of the phony bloodline originated in two places. In
the 1930s the writings and speeches of the Italian esotericist Julius
Evola received prominence in many philosophical, esoteric, and
right-wing political circles, and were admired by Nazi leaders like
Heinrich Himmler. Many ‘Priory’ themes originated in Evola’s ideas.
To Evola’s thinking, in the old ‘Priory’ system of world order, the
king was believed to be a sacred being. Divine virtues and powers
descended on him. Traditional institutions were based on sacred
legacies. The state itself had a transcendent meaning. Evola also
referred to a special quality of the blood which he alleged once
existed in one royal house. Above all, he admired Godfrey of Bouillon,
first Latin ruler of Palestine after the First Crusade, as the ideal ruler,
the lux monarchorum (‘light of monarchs’).(21) Man could only be
restored, Evola wrote, by the government of a spiritual elite, those
wearing the belt or cord of initiates that marks the ‘carriers of some
invisible influence’.(22) All these ideas permeate ‘Priory’ thought;
‘the Priory documents’ even require members to have a cord at
initiation.
To create the concept of the bloodline, Evola’s ideas were melded
with one other source, the doctoral dissertation of Walter Johannes
Stein, originally published in Germany in 1928.(23) In this work,
11

called The Ninth Century: World History in the Light of the Holy Grail,
Stein, a close associate of Rudolf Steiner, detailed what he felt was
the historical and symbolic background behind the Grail sagas.
An appendix to The Ninth Century is a genealogical chart Stein
calls the ‘Grail bloodline’. One side extends into the royal house of
France. Another extends down to Godfrey of Bouillon. Part of Stein’s
thesis is that events in the lives of actual historical figures served as
models for the characters and for some events in the Grail stories.
According to Stein, the people associated with this family tree
were acknowledged in their time as being of a high spiritual nature
and having paranormal capacities. Yet he also stresses that these
capacities had vanished from this family hundreds of years ago.
An undisciplined reader of Stein could easily confuse the historical
persons with symbols. Stein’s intent is actually to illustrate how the
positive spiritual forces represented by the Holy Grail are sometimes
manifested in the lives and actions of people and how those actions
can affect society and events. He did not in any way state or imply
that the Holy Grail was, or that it represented, a bloodline. He knew
very well that is not the case.
These are the sources which, when twisted and distorted, were
used to fabricate the fiction that a special bloodline supported by an
age-old esoteric society lay behind most of the key political events
and mysteries of French history and even the Holy Grail itself.
Today the ‘Priory’ is intermittently active. Periodically, people
claiming to be its representatives still attempt to influence writers and
researchers by promoting in private correspondence the ‘Priory’s’
fabricated versions of history. Many well-intentioned people have
been deceived by these fabrications. Despite the disillusionment
which many may now feel, it is important to know there are groups
and individuals in the world who are genuinely spiritual, highly
developed, and acting to benefit mankind. They have existed in the
past; they exist today; they will exist in the future, as long as even only
a handful of people have the courage to reach inside themselves and
live their lives in accordance with a genuine spirituality. However, to
preserve the truth, it is incumbent on each of us to speak out on its
behalf to counterbalance the false and materialistic sensationalism
of the world’s ‘Priories of Sion’. By following such a path of integrity,
12

each of us can work to maintain true spirituality, both within
ourselves and in the world. Only then will be born a better day for
humanity. This is in fact one of the lessons learned on the quest of
the great spiritual reality which is the genuine Holy Grail.
Endnotes

Sources
ÂŠ2000 by Robert Richardson. All rights reserved.
Originally published in Gnosis (No. 51, Spring 1999), pp. 49-55.

Robert Richardson is the author of The Unknown Treasure: The Priory of Sion Fraud
and the Spiritual Treasure of Rennes-le-ChĂ˘teau (Houston, TX: NorthStar, 1998),
available from Pratum Book Co., PO Box 985, Healdsburg, California 95448, USA.
knowledge@pratum.com.
Article is reproduced on Alpheus with the kind permission of the author and
publisher.

The Priory of Sion Hoax by Robert Richardson

"The Grail is not a bloodline. This false story originated in reams of fraudulent documents created by an extreme right-wing French sect. The group responsible for these fictions, calling itself the Priory of Sion (Prieuré de Sion) and claiming an ancient esoteric lineage, has kept its own authentic history carefully hidden. How it constructed its fraud has not been revealed. It is long past time for the light of truth to reveal the ‘Priory of Sion’ and the fictional bloodline it has promoted for what they are really are, a fraud. The background of this group reveals its actual motives and sources of information..."